Credit card scam hits more than 6,000 victims

Michael P. Mayko

Updated 11:20 pm, Wednesday, March 27, 2013

NEW HAVEN -- Every day, unsuspecting Americans open emails that proclaim they've won an international lottery. Other times, they are promised millions of dollars for helping a foreign national move money to the United States.

But anyone who opens these deceptive emails potentially is the victim of fraud by someone using his or her credit or debit card. The moment a person hands over personal financial information, security is breached.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall sentenced Laurentio Cristian Busca, 28, a Romanian national, to the maximum five years in prison for his guilty plea to committing credit card fraud.

In this case, 6,119 people responded to malicious emails, including a single mother who nearly lost her home and another person who could no longer afford the costly medicine her child needed.

Busca is one of eight Romanian nationals charged in this case, which netted 32,000 different credit card and debit card numbers issued by banks such as Chase, HSBC and People's United.

"I know from reading the reports how frustrating, how time-consuming, how fearful ... this must be to the victims ... that this may never end," Hall said, adding that one couple spent 48 hours trying to clear their names.

Instead, Rasile claims Busca made perhaps $2,500 buying and reselling hundreds of pages of credit-card and debit-card numbers to others.

Rasile also claimed his client was forced into criminal activity by a band of gypsies who sent him to Italy and made him purchase goods with stolen credit cards until Busca eventually escaped.

But Chang claimed that story only "provides Busca with a convenient explanation for why he began committing crimes."

The prosecutor advised the judge that when Busca was arrested in Italy, he told authorities the laptop and CD that allowed him to program credit cards' magnetic strips were bought on the street, along with a sock containing several counterfeit credit cards.